The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

282 LIFE OF GEORGE STEPHENSON. [chap. xxiv.
formances not proving satisfactory, they were finally withdrawn.
One of them slipped off the rails near the Sankey viaduct, and
was nearly thi-own over the embankment. Their chief defect
consisted in their inability to keep up a sufficient supply of steam
for regular work ; the steam-blast not being adopted in the
engines. Indeed, the superiority of Mr. Stephenson's locomotives
over all others that had yet been tried, induced the directors of
the railway to require that the engines supplied to them by other
builders should be constructed after the same model. It is now
an invariable practice with railway companies to determine the
kind of locomotive with which they are to be supplied by con-
tractors ; but in those days it was positively made a ground of
complaint, against both the company and the engineer, that this
salutary precaution was adopted. The Liverpool directors had
given every opportunity for trials, from Dr. Booth's "Veloci-
pede " (which knocked itself to pieces on the line) to the
" Eocket ;
" and having ascertained by actual experience the best
kind of engine for their purpose, they could not, amidst the bustle
and responsibilities of a large and increasing traffic, allow their
railway to be used as a practising ground for the host of experi-
menters and inventors who were springing up on all sides.
They therefore closed the line against further trials of new in-
ventions.
It was afterwards made _ a ground of complaint against Mr.
Stephenson in an influential publication,* that he had obtained a
monopoly of the engines supplied to the Liverpool and Manches-
ter Eailway, as well as of the appointments of the workmen
employed on the line. At the same time the writer admitted
the rapidity of the improvements made in the locomotives, not-
withstanding the alleged monopoly ; for he stated that during
the year and a half which followed the opening, " the engines
have been constantly varied in their weight and proportions, in
their magnitude and form, as the experience of each successive
month has indicated : as defects became manifest they were rem-
edied ; improvements suggested were adopted ; and each quar-
ter produced engines of such increased power and efficiency, that
their predecessors were abandoned, not because they were worn
* Edinburgh Review for October, 1832. Art. by Dr. Larduer.